Thursday, February 13, 2014

Answering a "progressive" who (correctly) sees cronyism as an inevitable
consequence of central planning, but is untroubled by it; John Stossel makes the
following observations regarding its enormous visible and invisible cultural
and economic costs:

It
distorts the economy and the culture -- and it turns us into a nation of
favor-seekers instead of creators and producers.

What about all
the new businesses that would have gotten investment money but didn't have Gore
on their boards? What new ideas might have thrived if old industries weren't
coddled? We don't know. We will never know the greatness of what might have
existed had the state not sucked the oxygen out of the incubator.

Stossel calls this an argument for "smaller" government, but that is akin to a
physician advising his patient to remove only part of a cancerous tumor. This analogy is inexact, as we shall see: What we really need is a proper
government, which protects our individual rights, and isn't in the business
of looting from -- or doling out favors to -- anyone.

Without any
government, we would have anarchy; but if we merely cut back, we would have the
same problems on a smaller scale and would
eventually see them get much bigger again with a vengeance. The progressive
Stossel mentions knows this on some level, which is why he included the military and prisons (which the government and only the government should control) in his list of
things he thinks we should get from the government. (Most people wouldn't have a problem with roads, either, but they are mistaken.)

Until opponents of the
"progresives" start discriminating between legitimate and illegitimate uses of
government, the "progressives" will own the debate -- which will look like a choice between
advocating anarchy and merely quibbling over who gets what favors, and whose
resources will be raided to pay for it.